general reading. Starch factory In his course of reading, Abbot was particularly attentive to chemistry and mechanics, which had long been favorite pursuits with him. His aim was to apply them to the useful purposes of life. The qualities and uses of that most common of vegetables, the potato, with the machinery by which its flour might be extracted on a large scale by horse or water power, early attracted his attention. A starch factory at Wilton, under the care of his brother Ezra, was the result of his genius. In 1818, Samuel returned to Wilton for the purpose of superintending and improving the starch manufacturing concern. Here, and occasionally in the nearby town of Jaffrey, where a branch of the business had been established, he spent the remainder of his life, devoting his time principally to literary and scientific pursuits, and for relaxation to business and mechanical labor. The flour of the potato recommended itself to the proprietors of the cotton cloth factories in New England for use as sizing, in preference to starch made from wheat flour. The demand for potato flour became general, and its manufacture a source of profit. The farmers of the neighborhood were also much benefitted in their agriculture by this manufacturer, as it afforded them a home market and ready pay for one of their most abundant and safest crops. Scientific pursuits In his continuing studies, Abbot informed himself on most of the discoveries of the modern science of that time, so that it was difficult to touch on any subject, however abstruse, with which he had not made himself acquainted, and on which he could not throw light and give information. The peculiar characteristics of his mind were accuracy, caution, and clearness. With a quickness almost like intuition, he detected the weakness or fallacy of an argument, and no man saw more clearly its legitimate application or the point at which its force ceased. In experimental philosophy, such was his caution that he was seldom if ever misled by his facts to form an erroneous theory. In 1828, when the "pneumatic paradox," as it was called, was attracting the attention of scholars, he first suggested a true theory, which was afterwards experimentally proved by his nephew, Jos. H. Abbot, and an article thereon published in the American Journal of Science and Arts. In 1837-1838, he detected the fallacy of the instrument called